[Coffee.]

I agree with the article. I don't see a bias in the article at all. The article had no implication that religion makes people stupid, or that stupid people pick up religion because they're too "dumb" to think around it. Instead, the article talked about how many people pick up religion out of unhappiness, and intelligent people tend to be more happy. That says it all; it's a correlation, not a causation. Intelligence leads to happiness. Happiness leads to content. Content people typically do not feel the need to convert into a religion. This does not say that those who grew up religious won't stay religious and happy, this also does not say that those who are happy and content won't ever convert into a religion, it just states that it's less likely, and that they found that unintelligent people tended to be religious.

Originally Posted by Brandon

I think it has everything to do with intelligence. Religious debates are nothing new to our civilization. They've been going on for a long time. If you're really that intelligent, you would know what kind of arguments the other person is going to say because of your extensive knowledge about the other side of the argument. If you can't look past your own point of view, you are only limiting your own capabilities and you're not fully understanding other perspectives. An intelligent person knows that they don't know everything but strives to know everything; it doesn't matter whether it's completely illogical to them or not. Everything is information and information is neither bad or good in itself; it's just knowledge. If you refuse to seek knowledge, are you really that intelligent? Perhaps you have the capacity of extensive learning, but if you intentionally deprive yourself of knowledge, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Shooting yourself in the foot is, of course, a stupid thing to do. If it's habitual, people would look at you as an idiot. So yes...if someone is religious/non-religious and argues while not being able to see past their own views, they're pretty much an idiot. At least in my eyes.

I 100% see your point, but I disagree as well. While I think that "arguing" about religion is irritating, I don't consider the Mormons coming to my door asking me to convert are unintelligent, nor do I consider my Christian friends debating me. I believe that their sense of character and respect for other views is different than mine.

With that, I could think of circumstances where I believe that everybody has problems looking at the "other side" in an unbiased way. For myself, I have a hard time looking at those against gay marriage in an unbiased way because I think it's utterly ridiculous to reject somebody's rights to anything. You probably have your own issues (maybe drugs, since I've seen you argue in a few of those) where your opinion is very strong and you have a hard time accepting information on another point-of-view. For some people, religion is like that. They cannot accept that somebody believes/does not believe the same way as they do.